Using consensus investment research processed to allow systematic analysis (see Supplementary information S1 (box)), AVOS Life Sciences has analysed the performance of the top 14 pharmaceutical companies as a group. The analysis focuses on each company's major prescription drug portfolio (MRDP; the collection of branded drugs each of which is projected to achieve at least US$500 million in annual sales) as a key measure of overall performance. Here, we present several forecasted metrics from this peer-group analysis with the aim of capturing the industry's performance from 2007–2012E (see Supplementary information S2 (table) for a summary for each company).

Second, the proportion of peer-group revenue derived from biologics rises considerably, from 23% of MRDP sales in 2007 to 36% in 2012E (Fig. 1b). The companies with the largest percentage of MRDP revenue coming from biologics in 2007 were Amgen (96.7%, $13.6 billion), Roche (70.8%, $16.9 billion) and Wyeth (39.6%, $5.3 billion). The forecasted growth is driven by products such as Roche's Avastin (bevacizumab) and Abbott's Humira (adalimumab); new products anticipated to launch during the forecast period such as Amgen's denosumab and Johnson & Johnson's golimumab; and vaccines, in particular GlaxoSmithKline's Cervarix, Merck's Gardasil and Wyeth's Prevnar.

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